We have lost—at any rate in the post-primary school—our grip on education. It has become a mass of uncoordinated subjects, a chaos instead of a cosmos. Its dominating idea, so far as it has one, is to provide the equipment of knowledge which an intelligent man should possess. So it tends to become a collection of isolated subjects—a world of planets, as the Greeks perceived planets, stars wandering each on its irregular way, occasionally dashing into each other. For this we need to substitute a solar system whose ruling principle is the making of human beings.
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Sir Richard Livingstone on the Value of History
A man who knows the origins of the world in which he lives, looks at it with more understanding, walks in it with securer and more certain steps; he is less intimidated by words, for he knows their history, less inclined to either excessive respect or contempt for existing institutions, for he sees how they came to be there. He understands the world better, as parents understand a child whom they have known from its cradle better than a stranger understands him, and he is more confident and capable in handling it.
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Sir Richard Livingstone on the Need for Deep Values
In the past, spiritual forces, of which Christianity is the chief, have done much to control and direct the country, but these forces, which at all times fight an uphill battle, have lost ground; and in proportion as they lose it, life loses direction and purpose, and character becomes a habit whose roots are dead, a house whose foundations are sapped. Here is our biggest need; the need of values and standards which are more than mere habits, which go down below the soil of custom into the rock of clear conviction and are founded in a philosophy of life.
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Sir Richard Livingstone on Education for a World Adrift
Their education did little to help them. It was like a half-assembled motorcar; most of the parts were there, but they were not put together. Reformers wished to base it on science and technology, or on sociology and economics, whose importance they saw; if they had had their way, they would have produced a good chassis, but overlooked the need of an engine not to speak of a driver who knew where to go. The real problem lay deeper than science or sociology or politics: it was spiritual.